The six of them walked slowly along in the darkness. No one spoke. Seeing the bodies lying there on the table was so stark, so shattering, so totally, irrevocably real, that they could not put words to their grief.
They had gone together to the Mansion House at the specific invitation of Mother Smith, Emma, and Mary. The rest of the Church would come tomorrow, when the doors would be thrown open and ten thousand Saints would move past the coffins in long, silent lines, paying one last sorrowful tribute to their leaders. But tonight only the extended family and a small group of intimate friends were invited to come in after the immediate families had their chance to say farewell to their husbands and fathers.
That the Steeds had been included was silent testimony to the bonds that had been forged between these two families. Emma and Mother Smith had asked for Benjamin, Mary Ann, Lydia, and Nathan. In addition, Mary had requested that Rebecca and Derek be included because of her longtime friendship with Rebecca.
As they approached the first houses on Steed Row—Nathan and Lydia’s on the left, Derek and Rebecca’s on the right—they stopped. It was almost ten o’clock. The streets were deserted. Most of the homes were dark now. A great reverential hush seemed to lie over the city. They were reluctant to speak and break the silence, and yet they could not simply part without giving word to their sorrow.
“It was seventeen years ago this spring,” Mary Ann said softly. “Remember? Martin Harris suggested that we hire those two Smith boys to help us clear the land. He said what good workers they were.”
Nathan’s voice was husky as he nodded and spoke. “I walked partway home with them one afternoon. That was when Joseph first told me about his going to the grove to pray.”
“And I fired them,” Benjamin said with shame in his voice, “because everyone in town was saying that Joseph was a charlatan. I didn’t want people to think I was believing anything Joseph said.”
Rebecca was still crying softly, but she smiled through it. “Do you know what I remember? Joseph pulling sticks with me and with Matthew and letting Matthew win.”
“He didn’t let you win too?” Lydia asked.
“No. I was giggling so hard before we even started, Joseph just pulled me over and started to tickle me. I loved him from that moment on.”
“I feel as if part of me has died,” Lydia said in a hoarse whisper.
“It has,” Benjamin said, his voice also trembling. “A part of all of us has died. But in another way, it is a part that will always live too.”
Mary Ann moved closer to Benjamin and slipped under his arm, as though she were cold, but her chin was up and her eyes were radiant through the tears. “Do you realize how fortunate we are to have had Joseph and Hyrum be that much a part of us for all these years? Future generations will call us blessed. We walked and talked with the Prophet. We ate with him. We sat at his feet.”
“We were his next-door neighbors,” Nathan murmured.
Only Lydia understood all that he meant by that comment, and that brought the tears flowing again for her. Nathan slipped an arm around her and held her tightly. Rebecca turned to her too. “How is Emma, Lydia?”
Lydia had gone upstairs with Dimick Huntington to see Emma while the others were viewing the bodies. She shook her head. “She is totally, completely devastated. I’ve never seen her like this. It seems all of her reserves are gone. She has nothing more to draw on.”
“Those reserves have been tapped too many times,” Mary Ann said sadly.
“But she’s a strong woman,” Lydia went on. “I predict that tomorrow she’ll be there with her head high to greet the people. But tonight, she is just completely lost.”
“Oh, I hope this doesn’t make her lose the baby,” Rebecca said.
“I asked her about that and she says she’s all right. The baby seems strong and healthy.”
“Mother Smith was the one who surprised me,” Derek put in. “She was obviously grieving, but there was such a peace and serenity about her tonight. I felt like she was comforting us instead of the other way around.”
“She was, wasn’t she?” Nathan said. He had been struck by the same thing quite powerfully.
“Mother Smith is an incredible woman,” Benjamin said.
Suddenly, Rebecca moved away from Derek and into her mother’s arms. “Oh, Mama!” she cried. “Why did this happen? We needed Joseph so much.”
“I don’t know,” Mary Ann said. “I don’t know.”
“What is going to happen now?” Lydia cried, giving voice to her own fears. “How can we go on without Joseph?”
“Oh, we’ll go on,” Nathan said, “but it will never be the same again.”
“But who will even lead us?” Rebecca asked in anguish. “Who could ever take Joseph’s place?”
Benjamin suddenly straightened. “May I speak for Joseph and answer that?”
They all turned to him in surprise.
“If Joseph were here at this moment, I think I know what he would say.” And then he began to quote something. It was something that had so impressed Benjamin that day when Peter had burst into the house to read it to them, that he had committed it to memory. Earlier in the day, as he walked out on the prairie by himself, trying to cope with the shock of knowing that Joseph was dead and wondering what that would mean now, it had come back to him with great power.
“‘The standard of truth has been erected,’” he began; “‘no unhallowed hand can stop the work from progressing.’”
He stopped, letting that sink in for a moment. “Yesterday, many unhallowed hands tried to stop the work, and I suppose today they are celebrating their supposed triumph. But Joseph said that no unhallowed hand could stop this work. Not one!”
As they nodded now, he went on. “‘Persecutions may rage, mobs may combine, armies may assemble, calumny may defame, but the truth of God will go forth boldly, nobly, and independent till it has penetrated every continent, visited every clime, swept every country, and sounded in every ear, till the purposes of God shall be accomplished and the great Jehovah shall say the work is done.’”
Benjamin looked at each one in turn. “I think that’s what Joseph would say to us if he were here.”
Mary Ann’s head came up now in wonder. “He would, wouldn’t he? He would chide us, remind us that what we are engaged in wasn’t his work and his glory, or it would die with him. It is God’s work and God’s glory. And it is not done!”
Nathan now understood Mother Smith’s serenity and peace. “Do you remember Joseph’s prayer? The one given him by revelation back in Ohio?”
They all looked blank.
“I can’t quote it verbatim, but it goes something like this. ‘The keys of the kingdom are given unto man on the earth, and from there the gospel will roll forth to the ends of the earth.’ ”
He hesitated, trying to remember the exact wording, and then Derek came in softly “‘As the stone that was cut out of the mountain without hands shall roll forth, so shall the gospel roll forth until it fills the whole earth.’”
For a long time they stood there in the darkness and in the quiet. Each was lost in their memories, each was immersed in their thoughts. Then Rebecca pulled away from her mother and stepped to her father. She went up on tiptoes and kissed him on the cheek. “Thank you, Papa,” she said softly.
Chapter Notes
The guard’s coming to the bedroom door and the prisoners’ sampling of the wine were the last things to happen prior to the attack on the jail. The story is accurate; the motive the guard had in having Joseph and the others test it as given here is a surmise. (See HC 6:616.)
The details of the Martyrdom are retold in many sources, but all are based on the eyewitness accounts of John Taylor and Willard Richards (see HC 6:616–21; B. H. Roberts, Life of John Taylor, Collector’s Edition [Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1989], pp. 137–40). Even though he was terribly wounded, John Taylor remained conscious throughout the attack. It is likely that when Elder Richards put the mattress on top of Elder
Taylor, the straw and ticking helped stop the bleeding and saved his life.
Willard Richards, who was a very large man, miraculously had only the lower tip of his left ear grazed by a bullet, even though he stood in a room into which hundreds of shots were being fired. This fulfilled a remarkable prophecy made by Joseph over a year before. “Willard,” Joseph said, “the time will come when the balls shall fly around you like hail, and you shall see your friends fall on the right and on the left, but there shall not even be a hole in your garments.” (See HC 6:619.)
Hyrum Smith’s watch was smashed completely by the ball that hit it from behind. But the bullet that hit John Taylor’s watch hit the face, his life thus being saved in two ways: the watch stopped the bullet from entering his body, and the impact of the ball threw him back into the room. The hands of the watch were stopped at sixteen minutes and twenty-six seconds after five p.m., marking forever the exact time that the tragedy struck. (See Roberts, Life of John Taylor, pp. 149–50.)
Joseph did hit some of the mob when he fired the pistol (see Don Cecil Corbett, Mary Fielding Smith: Daughter of Britain [Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co., 1966], pp. 166–67).
The first message written by Willard Richards concerning the tragedy was not delivered to Nauvoo until sunup the next morning. By then, other riders had come in during the night with the news. But the first official confirmation was Willard’s letter. Elder Taylor had asked Elder Richards that in writing the message he downplay Elder Taylor’s wounds so that his family would not worry. (See HC 6:621–22.)
On the night of the Martyrdom, long before the first word of the tragedy came to Nauvoo, a spirit of death pervaded the city. Bathsheba Smith—wife of George A. Smith, a member of the Twelve—said, “Such a barking and howling of dogs and bellowing of cattle all over the city of Nauvoo I never heard before nor since.” (See Restoration, p. 621.)
The reactions of both Emma and Mary Fielding Smith are drawn from historical records (see Gracia N. Jones, Emma’s Glory and Sacrifice: A Testimony [Hurricane, Utah: Homestead Publishers and Distributors, 1987], pp. 158–60; Corbett, Mary Fielding Smith, pp. 171–72). Mother Smith’s experience when first seeing her two martyred sons and the answers she received come directly from her own record of the events of that day (see Lucy Mack Smith, History of Joseph Smith by His Mother, ed. Preston Nibley [Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1954], pp. 324–25). Having the Steeds visit the Mansion House on that first evening that the bodies were brought back to Nauvoo—the evening of
28 June—is based on the statement in the historical record which says, “Relatives and particular friends were also permitted to view the remains during the evening” (HC 6:627).
The prayer quoted by Nathan and Derek is now found in D&C 65.
Joseph Smith, the Prophet and Seer of the Lord, has done more, save Jesus only, for the salvation of men in this world, than any other man that ever lived in it. In the short space of twenty years, he has brought forth the Book of Mormon, which he translated by the gift and power of God, and has been the means of publishing it on two continents; has sent the fulness of the everlasting gospel, which it contained, to the four quarters of the earth; has brought forth the revelations and commandments which compose this book of Doctrine and Covenants, and many other wise documents and instructions for the benefit of the children of men; gathered many thousands of the Latter-day Saints, founded a great city, and left a fame and name that cannot be slain. He lived great, and he died great in the eyes of God and his people; and like most of the Lord’s anointed in ancient times, has sealed his mission and his works with his own blood; and so has his brother Hyrum. In life they were not divided, and in death they were not separated! . . .
. . . The testators are now dead, and their testament is in force.
. . . They lived for glory; they died for glory; and glory is their eternal reward. From age to age shall their names go down to posterity as gems for the sanctified.
. . . Their innocent blood, with the innocent blood of all the martyrs under the altar that John saw, will cry unto the Lord of Hosts till he avenges that blood on the earth. Amen.
—John Taylor, Doctrine and Covenants 135:3, 5, 6, 7
Book Seven: The Work and the Glory - No Unhallowed Hand
The Work and the Glory - No Unhallowed Hand
Text illustrations by Robert T. Barrett
© 1996 Gerald N. Lund and Kenneth Ingalls Moe
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without permission in writing from the publisher, Deseret Book Company, P. O. Box 30178, Salt Lake City, Utah 84130. This work is not an official publication of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The views expressed herein are the responsibility of the author and do not necessarily represent the position of the Church or of Deseret Book Company.
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Preface
On a hot, sultry afternoon late in June, 1844, four men sat in the upper bedroom of the small rock jail in Carthage, Illinois. Charged falsely with treason, they waited in a town that was filled with hate for a trial that offered them little hope of justice. Shortly after five p.m., a mob, many with their faces painted black, stormed the jail. The guards posted there, as much the enemy to the prisoners as the infuriated mob was, fired a shot or two in the air, then conveniently fled.
It took no more than minutes. The men rushed up the stairs, forced the door, and unleashed a withering hail of bullets into the room. Joseph and Hyrum Smith were killed; John Taylor lay severely wounded beneath the bed. Only Willard Richards miraculously escaped. With roars of delight, the killers left the jail and went home to congratulate one another and celebrate their triumph. Joseph was dead. His most likely successor was dead with him. They had done what many others had tried to do—in New York, in Ohio, in Missouri, and in Illinois. They had at last silenced the voice that was drawing people to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in what outsiders saw as alarming numbers. They had struck down the man most responsible for the rise of this hated and abominable religion. Joe Smith was dead at last. And with him his work would die as well.
How little did they know!
When Joseph Smith went into that grove of trees a short distance west of his home in the spring of 1820, he learned in an instant that what he was about to do—and to become—would be implacably opposed by hell in all its fury. From that moment on, the opposition began. He was mocked, ridiculed, criticized, and condemned. As he moved forward, following the will of the Lord, opposition rose around him in endless, bitter processions. When the mockery and the ridicule were not sufficient to deter him, more serious means became the norm. He was slandered, vilified, shot at, beaten, thrown into court again and again, dragged from his home, cursed, spit upon, tarred and feathered.
Joseph had no illusions about how men felt about him. He once wrote: “As for the perils which I am called to pass through, they seem but a small thing to me, as the envy and wrath of man have been my common lot all the days of my life; and for what cause it seems mysterious, unless I was ordained from before the foundation of the world, for some good end, or bad, as you may choose to call it. Judge ye for yourselves. God knoweth all these things, whether it be good or bad. But, nevertheless, deep water is what I am wont to swim in; it all has become second nature to me. And I feel, like Paul, to glory in tribulation: for to this day has the God of my fathers delivered me out of them all, and will deliver me from henceforth; for behold, a
nd lo, I shall triumph over all my enemies, for the Lord God hath spoken it.” (History of the Church 5:143.)
From the beginning, however, the Lord also made it clear that there would be no ultimate triumph for those who sought to destroy the work. “The works, and the designs, and the purposes of God cannot be frustrated,” he said in July of 1828, “neither can they come to naught. . . . Remember, remember that it is not the work of God that is frustrated, but the work of men.” (D&C 3:1, 3.) And again he said, “I will not suffer that they shall destroy my work; yea, I will show unto them that my wisdom is greater than the cunning of the devil” (D&C 10:43).
It didn’t take long for those who had shoved the muzzles of their rifles into the upper room of the Carthage jail to realize that while they had killed Joseph Smith, they had not slowed in any way the work he had begun. Stunned, horrified, shocked into numbness by the brutal loss of their beloved leader, for a time it looked as though the Saints were vulnerable to collapse. Who would lead the Church now? Who could possibly take over from one as gifted and inspired as Joseph Smith? Would the Church collapse into various splinters as this man or that stepped forward to ever so humbly claim that he was the one chosen to take over the reins? To the outside observer, for a time it looked as though the enemies had done their work well. But to those with eyes of faith, there was never any doubt. While Joseph was a prophet and leader of unusual and unique abilities—one of the greatest of all the prophets to ever live—the Church was not his, nor did the work depend on him alone. Joseph Smith was but an instrument in God’s hands. He himself testified to that again and again during his lifetime. It was not the Church of Joseph Smith of Latter-day Saints. It was the Church of Jesus Christ, and Jesus Christ was still at the head.
Six weeks to the day following the Martyrdom, the Lord gave a miraculous and marvelous indication of how his church should be led and who should lead it. Brigham Young—barely known outside the circles of the Church, but long faithful in his service—would now step forward and take the Church onward. The work was only beginning, and it was time to move on to new tasks, new horizons, new visions, new places of settlement.
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